


Premonition

by butterfleyes



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Crossing Timelines, Eventual Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Good W. D. Gaster, Goopy W. D. Gaster, Major Original Character(s), Parent W. D. Gaster, Pre-Accident W. D. Gaster, Spatial Anomaly, Suspense, Temporal Paradox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-11 17:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18428855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterfleyes/pseuds/butterfleyes
Summary: After a long day of work, a young Dadster puts his infant daughter Arial to bed, and does the same soon after. However, they are suddenly faced with a visit from a mysterious stranger, who has interest in seeing the little babybones.





	Premonition

Gaster let out an exasperated sigh as he flopped into bed. He had just put Arial to sleep for the night, and now it was his turn. It was a long, busy day for him, but it was finally time to indulge in a well-earned rest, knowing that everything was taken care of and that his babybones was snoozing safe and sound in her crib. Taking his glasses off, he yawned deeply and rubbed his temples, before laying down and pulling the covers up. Closing his exhausted eyesockets, he finally drifted off to sleep.

A few hours later, Gaster suddenly stirred awake to the sound of Arial crying from her room across the hall. He sighed.

"Coming, sweetie."

But just as he was about to get out of bed, the power went out.

_Damn it._

Gaster grumbled to himself as he went to find a flashlight, being careful not to trip over or bump into anything. There was a subtle feeling of something unnatural in the air, and the sound of his daughter's crying only made the situation more urgent.

"I'll be right there, pumpkin!"

He groped his way down the hall and into the kitchen, fumbling through the drawers one-by-one to find that cursed flashlight. Luckily, after digging through all those utensils and junk, he finally found it. But as soon as he turned it on, Arial suddenly stopped crying. Gaster's heart plummeted in dread.

"Ari?!"

He rushed into her room to see what was wrong. What he saw next made him freeze, eyesockets widened in shock.

There was a faint, shadowy entity standing in the middle of the room. It stood at about the same height as him--perhaps a bit taller--and it was shaped like some sort of man cloaked in black.

"Wh-Who are you? How did you get in here?" Gaster asked in a trembling voice.

The entity did not answer. It slowly approached Arial's crib, causing Gaster's adrenaline to skyrocket.

_"G-Get away from her!"_

He ran to attack the entity, only to get trapped in a goopy, tar-like puddle before he could summon a single bone, rendering him unable to move. He fell to his knees, dropping the flashlight, causing it to hit the floor with a flicker. Gaster's paternal instinct made him blind with panic as he saw the entity looming over the tiny babybones as she made a continuous fussing noise. He struggled helplessly, unable to defend his child, with tears in his eyesockets.

_"No, God, please no...!"_

He was suddenly silenced by a glop of that same goopy substance as it covered his mouth. He cried out in a muffled voice as he saw the entity slowly reach a hand towards Arial...

...and gently caressed her skull.

"Shhh... there, there, little one..." it crooned.

Gaster's eyesockets widened in shock and confusion. The entity's voice sounded vaguely like his, except more fuzzy and almost glitch-like. What was even stranger was that Arial's fussing quieted down a little. Gaster watched as the entity looked around the immediate area, until it spotted something on the floor next to the crib. In the semi-illuminated darkness, the object sort of looked like the little pale pink rabbit with the darker pink ribbon tied around its neck that Gaster tucked in with his daughter, to give her something to cuddle with as she fell asleep.

The entity reached down to pick it up and showed it to Arial.

"Do you want your bunny?"

Gaster heard Arial make excited noises as she reached for it.

"Here you go."

The entity tucked the rabbit back in with Arial, who happily hugged it tight. Gaster watched as the entity continued to caress her skull comfortingly, hearing the little babybones yawn and soon fall back asleep. The goopy puddle trapping Gaster receded, and he took a gasp for air as he pulled free.

"Who are you?" he quietly asked once more, grabbing the flashlight and pointing it at the entity. It slowly turned its head, and what Gaster saw nearly made him drop the flashlight again.

The entity's face looked somewhat like his, except more broken, twisted, and malformed. Its appearence as a whole was vaguely skeletal, and Gaster noticed that each of its hands had a gaping hole in the middle of their palms.

"Wh-What... What is the meaning of this...?"

The entity looked back down at Arial's peaceful face as she slept. "Such a precious life bestowed upon this world... Truly a small ray of hope in these dismal times..."

As it spoke, Gaster noticed that it's voice was subtly growing thick with emotion.

"Do you understand how His Majesty felt after the loss of his children? The amount of pain and grief, feeling that he failed as a parent?" the entity asked, as it softly grazed Arial's cheekbone with the back of its fingers.

Gaster's browline drew together in confusion.

"Perhaps not now, but one day..."

The entity turned to face him once more, its expression welling with quiet sadness.

" _You will._ "

With that, the entity disappeared in the blink of an eye. Gaster stood in stunned silence as the power came back online. Shutting the flashlight off, he walked over to the crib to check on Arial.

Still sleeping, still cuddling with her rabbit.

Gaster smiled softly and leaned forward to give her a kiss on her frontal bone.

Then suddenly, the phone rang. Gaster went back into the kitchen to answer it. After picking it up, he set the motion lock so he could use his hands to sign what he was going to say, as the caller wouldn't understand him otherwise.

_**HELLO?** _   
_**...** _   
_**YES, THIS IS DR. GASTER.** _   
_**...** _   
_**YES, EVERYTHING IS FINE. JUST A MINOR BLACKOUT.** _   
_**...** _   
_**I DON'T KNOW, SOMETHING MUST'VE TRIPPED THE CORE'S MAIN POWER SUPPLY AND CAUSED A TEMPORARY SHUTDOWN.** _   
_**...** _   
_**ALRIGHT, I'LL HAVE IT CHECKED OUT IN THE MORNING.** _   
_**...** _   
_**ALRIGHT.** _   
_**...** _   
_**GOOD NIGHT.** _

After hanging up, Gaster put the flashlight away before going back to bed. But unlike his daughter, sleep was not easily coming to him, as his mind was now racing with that strange entity's words.

_What did it all mean?_

He took a moment to turn his lamp on and check his watch to see what time it was, as his alarm clock obviously had to be reset.

_3:44 AM._

He groaned in exhaustion, taking another moment to reset his alarm clock to its proper time. Then finally, he turned the lamp off and laid down in bed. Pulling the covers up once more, he tried to push those thoughts out of his mind. That "entity" was just trying to scare him, he bet! There's no way anything could happen to his precious Arial...

... _Right?_

**Author's Note:**

> This work was supposed to serve as a "prequel" to Arial's backstory, in which it foreshadows her eventual disappearence later in her life. I thought it would it also be cool to add an empathetic parallel to Asgore's grief over losing Asriel and Chara; since Arial was born JUST after the royal children died (at least in this particular timeline). But what I find the saddest of all was the fact that the "mysterious stranger" (Post-Core Gaster) jumped to a past timeline just to see his daughter again. That's rough, buddy.


End file.
